Al Gore is in the running for the presidency of Harvard University – but he won’t make the grade because he lacks “the academic and intellectual standing,” Harvard’s search committee chair said yesterday.
“He’ll go into our pool and be considered seriously,” said Robert Stone, chairman of the Harvard Corporation.
“I rather doubt he’ll get it. He doesn’t have the academic and intellectual standing,” Stone told The Boston Globe.
The vanquished 52-year-old vice president – who graduated from Harvard in 1969 with honors – is one of 500 people nominated to succeed Neil Rudenstine, who plans to step down this summer.
Stone said that while Gore “has served the nation with great distinction” and is a staunch supporter of science and technology, he is unlikely to be tapped as the next president of Harvard because he’s never worked in academics.
“It is true that the vice president is one of among some 500 nominees whose names have been recommended to the search committee,” Stone said in a statement.
“At the same time, the committee continues to focus its attention on academic leaders who have spent much of their careers working in the educational-research domain.”
Vice presidential spokesman Jim Kennedy said Team Gore is “not commenting on any rumors about the vice president’s future.”
Other Washington figures, including Lawrence Summers, the secretary of the treasury and former Harvard economics professor, are seen as more likely for the prestigious post.
However, sources told the Globe the front-runner for the position is Harvey Fineberg, the university’s provost.
Joseph S. Nye, dean of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, said the university was more likely to hire a nonpartisan person than Gore.
Gore is “an extremely bright man who has a Harvard degree, and you can’t get much better experience,” Nye said.
“But he hasn’t been in the academic world.”